﻿Several years ago Goodwin Procter recognized that a growing number of our employees have caregiving responsibilities.

The GP Caregiver Support Center is staffed by the Visiting Nurse Association's LifeWeavers Network one of the oldest and most respected care providers in the United States.

Employees of Goodwin Procter and their family members have free access to the VNA Private Care Caregiver Support Center.

This employee benefit is also available to extended family members of Goodwin Procter anywhere in the U.S.

It is available seven days a week, including evenings and weekends.

If you're facing difficult decisions concerning the care of an aging parent, take advantage of your Caregiver Support Center by calling the toll free number 1-877-756-5007.

You will have the opportunity to speak with a professional nurse or social worker with extensive experience in eldercare issues.The professionals at the Caregiver Support Center have access to comprehensive, nationwide databases of information related to virtually every type of eldercare issue you and your family may be face.

Services of the Goodwin Procter Caregiver Support Center also include Working Caregiver Support Monthly Newsletter and The Goodwin Procter Caregivers Resource Center

To Read the May 2013 issue Click here: http://caregiversupportenews.enewsworks.com/﻿﻿

The Goodwin Procter Caregivers Resource Center contains a large library of content. It is easy to navigate to find the specific information you need at any time:﻿ Just click here to find information on virtually any topic related to caring for aging family members: To reach the on-line Caregiver Support Center click on the link below:

http://resourcecenter.workingcaregivers.com

The Internet is a great source of accurate, up-to-date information...but the sheer volume of websites can be overwhelming. And how do you know a site is trustworthy? The information at our Working

﻿Survey Shows Elder Care a Growing Concern for Adults Balancing Work and Family

The Lasting Impact of Employer-Sponsored Back-up Care, a study conducted by at Bowling Green State University, confirms that working men and women ages 40 to 60 are embracing elder care supports in order to focus and remain productive at workwhile feeling confident that their aging parent,or spouse, has access to qualitycare. Nearly 100% said that having an elder care benefit like the Back-Up Care Advantage Program has provided them with a level of comfort and increased their productivity.

Nearly 70% of those surveyed who used the elder care benefit said that this benefit has allowed them to work on a day they would have otherwise missed, and, on average, having access to adult back-up care has allowed employees to work six days in the past six months that they otherwise would have missed.﻿

Working Caregivers:

Eldercare and Older-Adult Information and Referral Center

"...increasingly people will struggle to keep a job as the demand to provide unpaid care for aging relatives (e.g. parents, aunts, uncles, friends, adult siblings) grows exponentially. Ultimately, this demand will far exceed the current level of supports in the community and the public funds available to pay for those minimal supports."

More and more individuals and employers will find they need to fill the gap financially and physically, and the worst is yet to come. But we aren’t talking about it. At least not yet; however, that’s going to have change.

What does eldercare/adult caregiving look like in action?

A couple of months ago, AARP in partnership with the Ad Council launched a three-year public service campaign to raise awareness of the tens of millions of unpaid family caregivers in the U.S. today.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out here. It is worth three minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pOGez_AmDY&feature=youtu.be﻿

The Elder Life Planning for Organizations program provides a well developed national network of experienced professionals who deal with specific caregiving issues including elder mental health issues, specialized housing issues, eligibility for publicly funded programs, specialists on financing costs of long-term care, as well as experts who specialize in estate planning and elder legal issues anywhere in the U.S.

Employers and their trade associations can offer the program to employees and their extended family members for a modest monthly fee. As the facts and figures below demonstrate, this modest fee will result in significant cost savings to the forward thinking employers who make it available to their working caregivers.

To find out how your company, bank, or other organization can offer this low-cost, high-value benefit, contact Bob O’Toole at Informed Eldercare Decisions, LLC 1-800-375-0595.

Stressed Baby Boomers Miss Work To Care For Family Members

By MATTHEW STURDEVANTThe Hartford Courant April 23, 2010

Baby boomers are getting stressed out by caring for an ill or injured parent or other family member while balancing a full-time job, and as a result they're missing work themselves, according to a new survey by The Hartford and a major provider of employee-assistance programs.

"Our research found a troubling trend of baby boomer caregivers being pushed to their limits," said Barbara Campbell, regional vice president of the Group Benefits Division at The Hartford Financial Services Group.

The survey of 862 people born between 1946 and 1964 found that a majority of boomers are stressed out about caring for a child, parent or spouse. They're also worried about how their job is affected by caring for someone at home.

More than half of boomers 55 and older and 68 percent of younger boomers, 45 to 54, say they have missed work or left work early in the past six months because of responsibilities as a caregiver.

Additionally, boomers take more leave due to their own illness — of which stress is a contributing factor — than any other age group, according to a separate study of 91,000 workers at 171 businesses that contract with The Hartford for employee-benefits packages.

Campbell suggests that employers can help relieve pressure felt by boomers who are caregivers.

"We hope to raise awareness among employers about this risk to their employees' health and productivity because they play a key role in bringing workers' lives back into balance," Campbell said.

New Insights and Innovations for ReducingHealth Care Costs for EmployersFEBRUARY 2010University of PittsburghInstitute on AgingMetLife Mature Market Institute

Employed caregivers find it more difficult than non-caregivers to take care of their own health or participate in preventive health screenings. For example, women caregivers were less likely to report annual mammograms than non-caregivers. Employed caregivers of all ages andgender defer preventive health screenings as well.

The relationship between employment and caregiving is complex. Taking on the caregiving role for an ill or disabled relative may depend on whether or not the individual is employed, how flexible his or her job is, and how intensive the demands of the caregiving are. Employed caregivers with little flexibility in their jobs whoare faced with intensive caregiving needs may be less likely to take on the caregiving role, or are more likely to reluctantly leave the workforce to accommodate their caregiving demands.

The MetLife study, Sons at Work: Balancing Employment and Eldercare, showed that men share many of the same difficulties with caregiving identified by working women. Once caregiving has started, more than six out of 10 (62%) caregivers say that they make some sort of workplace accommodation, such as going in late/leaving early, taking a leave of absence, or dropping back to part-time.

The 2009 National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP national caregiver survey, Caregiving in the U.S. (funded by MetLife Foundation), reports that 73% of family caregivers say that they are employed full- or part-time,1 while others suggest that this figure might be as low as 38%.2

Employed caregivers seem to be able to provide care to someone for 14 hours or less per week (considered a low level of caregiving) with little impact on their ability to stay on the job.

However, providing 20 hours or more per week often results in major work adjustments, such as cutting back on hours or stopping work altogether, and the decline in annual income that goes with that work adjustment.

Finally, data on the cost effects of caregiving on business and industry are scarce. The primary resource on this topic is The MetLife Caregiving Cost Study: Productivity Losses to U.S. Business.6Using caregiver prevalence estimates derived from the study, the authors estimate a cost to employers of $17.1 to $33.6 billion annually attributable to caregiving. These costs are due primarily to absenteeism ($5.1 billion), shifts from full-time to part-time work ($4.8 billion), replacing employees ($6.6 billion), and workday interruptions ($6.3 billion).

Copyright 2010 Working Caregivers: Eldercare and Older-Adult Information and Referral Center for Working Caregivers. All rights reserved.